On the occasion of the torchlight
parade two miles long, whereby the enemy sought to carry the city by
storm, and which passed close to our front door, our house was as dark
as Erebus. Josephine insisted even that the lights in the front hall
and in the basement should be extinguished, and she drew the
drawing-room curtains over the window-shades so that we need not seem
to furnish our foes with one pale ray of comfort. Induced by curiosity
to peep out at the passing show, she limited her strictures to scornful
but tranquil denunciation of the campaign rhetoric blazoned on the
transparencies, until the Spinney Guards arrived, headed by a
magnificent mulatto bearing a delineation of the Reform Candidate
submerged in a huge soup-tureen with an appropriate tag beneath. For
an instant she stared, then she gasped as though some one had struck
her, and she fiercely started to raise the window.
"What are you trying to do, Josephine?"
"Let me go, Fred. I will, I will. How dare they?"
"Pooh, dear! All is fair in politics. It's no worse than the Swamp of
Civil Service Reform," I said, as I tore away her vindictive grasp from
the window which she had succeeded in opening a foot or two, and shut
it hastily.
"How dare they? You had no right to prevent me from hissing, Fred.
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